Mazda 3 Tire & Wheel Questions

Comments

Performance is great, but realistically I live in Chicago so an all season tire is the direction of a winter tire is what i am leaning towards, and possibly a separate winter set in the somewhat distant future.

I live in central Kentucky, so heavy snowfalls are somewhat infrequent. In the past I ran Pirelli PZero Nero All Seasons as my winter tire on my 2007 Mazdaspeed 3, but this year I decided to try the Cooper Zeon RS3-A. No complaints so far. I'm also running the Coopers on my son's X3 and they are performing well in that application.

I put on Firestone Affinity tires and so far they have been great, have them on another car also. Got them with a buy 3, get 1 free offer and paid about $450 all said and done. The original Toyo's were pretty crappy and were shot at about 16k. With over 113k on the clock now, we're on our 3rd set of sneakers and hopefully these will be the last ones. I have Firestone Firehawk Wide Oval A S's on my Civic and am also very happy so far...same kind of deal when purchased. The tires on the 3s and Civic are 205/55/16's but would prefer a bit more sidewall, say in a 60 or 65 series.

I hope your realize that treadwear, traction and rolling resistance form a 3 way technology triangle and improvements in one area come from sacrificing one or more of the other areas. So you have to find a compromuise that works for you.

Go to Tire Rack's web site and read through the tests and reviews. That should help you figure out what will work,

We put these on my wife's '05 Mazda3s and have been very happy with the results...with proper rotation and air, they still look brand new with 10k on them. Very quiet and smooth ride also. Liked them so much, have them on my daughter's '09 Versa hatch. They are a touring tire I suspect but we are very satisfied with them.

I just bought a 2013 mazda 3i Sport Sedan automatic.The car drove so poorly I couldn't believe the good reviews it gets. On a whim I replaced the horrible oem tires and steel wheels with new tires and lighter alloy wheels and it helped the ride quite a bit.However, the car is LOUD on certain roads, so I'm looking into some kind of foam undercoating and for the wheel wells.